Analyzing Spinoza's Idea of Equality

THE FOUR EQUALS: ANALYZING SPINOZA'S IDEA OF EQUALITY MICHAEL H. HOFFHEIMER* Spinoza's defense of political democracy has long been celebrated. And Spinoza's effort to apply the geometric method to philosophy is well known. But no one, to my knowledge, has examined Spinoza's treatment of equality, which cuts across both his metaphysics and political theory 1 Analysis of Spinoza's use of equality2 reveals that it plays four distinct roles in his philosophy. The sum of its four functions, however, is greater than the parts, for equality operates throughout by way of analogy to provide coherence to Spinoza's world view. I. ELEMENTS OF EQUALITY Spinoza characterized four sorts of things as equal. Measurements can be equal. Minds have an equal capacity for reasoning. Citizens or groups of citizens have equal political right. And all existing particular things have an equal internal power by which they exist. 1. Equality of measurement - Spinoza used equal most fre- quently to denote mathematic or geometric proportion. In characterizing ratios as equal s Spinoza merely adopted the seventeenth- century way of expressing arithmetic equation (n=n). Similarly, he referred to angles as equal,4 and said a line-segment can be divided into equal parts, s These passages do not present serious interpretive problems. But Spinoza also extended this idea of equality and applied it to substance. The analogical operation of this notion of equality is readily apparent in his early, unpublished Short Treatise on God, Man, and Man's lYell Being, but a similar analogizing lies behind the adoption of key axioms and propositions in the Ethics. In the Short Treatise Spinoza repeatedly asserted that there cannot be two equal infinite or unlimited substances (gelyke onbe- paalde zelfstandigheeden). Their existence would entail a contra- diction, for they would necessarily limit each other.6 Thus, by 237 MICHAEL H. HOFFHEIMER indirect proof, Spinoza established the unity of substance. This curious use of equality is further illuminated by his argument that one substance cannot be the cause of another, because they both would share attributes; and this would be impossible bacause then both would be equal. 7 The hidden premise in both arguments is simply that substance cannot be equal to anything else. This metaphysical argument is closely bound up with the cartesian conception of space as not just a matrix for measurement but as itself a sort of unlimited thing. It would be impossible - both conceptually and physically - to have two infinite spaces. Con- sequenfly, Spinoza's equality of measurement applies only to relations of limitations of space. This is consistent with his rejection of the real divisibility of substance, s for if an area comprised in- t~mite units, it (like unlimited substance) could not be equal to another. 9 2. Equality of reasoning minds - Reasoning minds are equal in two possible ways. First, all people have an inherently equal capacity for reasoning. Spinoza expressed this equality or ratiocination mythologically by the equality of creation. Second, to the extent that people are rational, they wili agree - their ideas will coincide and they will live in social harmony. 1~ However, Spinoza only referred to the equality of minds in the context of discussing their rational potential. The rejection of election (of both individuals and nations) is central to the social ethic Spinoza developed in his political writings. And at the bottom of his project of scriptural criticism is the assump- tion that "the highest power of Scriptural interpretation belongs to every man . .,,u Although this is rooted in Spinoza's conception of reason itself, he defended it polemically by reference to scripture, which declares (according to Spinoza) that God created all people with equal intellects) 2 Spinoza also adduced scriptural authority for the equality o f nations. 13 But people and nations are equal for Spinoza only potentially. He sharply' distinguished the actual psychological constitution of persons, which is inherently unequal, from their potential. He associated equality with reason and cognition, and associated inequality with the passions and imagination. 14 Yet he characterized reasoning minds as equal only in contexts where reason is still confronted by the passions - in contexts where people are not actually equal. And he characterized minds that actually attain the highest level of rationality not as equal (nor as unequal) but as free or blessed)S His treatment of the equality of ratiocination parallels the equal- 238 SPINOZA'S IDEA OF EQUALITY ity of measurement, where equality was restricted to proportions of f'mitude. Minds are equal in their reasoning only so long as the reasoning is potential not actual. The actual free reasoning mind, like extension, can only be self-determined. The category of equality simply does not apply. Spinoza turns to religious metaphors. 16 3, Equality of right - Spinoza characterized people in the state of nature as equals. 17 He understood the state of nature to be a real historical moment. Is Prior to the formation of the state, each person had an equal natural right to exist and act according to his or her natural conditions. But in such a state people were determined by the passions not by reason. Moreover, for Spinoza the state of nature was marked by actual material inequality. Indeed, he explained the origin of political society as a response to this inequality, motivated by the benefits resulting from the division of labor - "for all men are not equally apt for work (aeque apti)...,,zo Equality of right continues after the establishment of the state, for the natural fight of individuals continues after the creation of political society.21 But this equality remains inherently limited. Within society the passions (especially vanity) oppose the natural equality of persons. 22 Spinoza described the history of the decline of the Hebrew state as the result of social inequality that resulted from the elevation of the Levites into a special caste, z3 And he designed many of the political mechanisms elaborated in the Political Treatise specifically to promote political, social and material equality and to counter the anti-egalitarian, socially dislocative forces engendered by the passions. ~ Nevertheless, though equality is in some sense an incident of good political organization, it is not, for Spinoza, the goal of politics. Rather Spinoza defined the best state in terms of conditions for freedom and reason. Within such a state people will live in harmony (concorditer). 2s He refrained from characterizing such a relationship as one of political equality (or inequality). 4. Equality of internal power of existing - Spinoza's treatment of equals in his mature writings is closely related to his theory of contingents. All individual things exist rather than not by an internal power of self-persistence or self-preservation. And all existing things are equal with respect to the internal force by which they endure .26 This internal force represents a modification of what Spinoza had termed "special divine providence" in the Short Treatise. 2v In that essay Spinoza rejected the explanation of particulars through 239 MICHAEL H. HOFFHEIMER generals and denied the existence of generals. 2s Instead he related the ultimate cause of the existence of things immediately to their comprehension by the totality (God or nature). 29 In this scheme, individuals derived existence only from participating in the totality, but the existence of the whole was itself a function of "divine providence" - the striving of all reality to persist in existence. This striving was manifest in individuals as the special divine providence. In later writings Spinoza rejected this scheme and emphasized the source of existence as an internal power. 3~ Though in the Ethics he continued to identify the power by which individuals exist with the power of God or nature, he stressed that this power operates not as the immediate manifestation of the inf'mite power but only as that power acting through the individual's own essence .31 The internalization of this force is accompanied by its limitation to the particular existing thing. "And only after this theoritieal shift did Spinoza characterize the power by which particular individuals exist as equal. As with Spinoza's other uses of equality, the particulars are equal in one aspect at the same time that they are most profoundly unequal in others. Individual things differ from the absolute in their transience; and they are not equal in essence, location or length of duration. Equality, again, is a function of limitation. II. PROPERTIES OF THE COMPOUND Equality plays an important function in Spinoza's writings in two ways. First, he draws certain inferences from the equality of sets of things and transfers them to related sets of things. Thus he extends the equality of geometric proportions to arguments about the nature of substance. Substance, as cartesian extended stuff, is ~rnilar to Euclidean space, likewise, from. the idea of equal political right rooted in a descriptive theory-of natural law, Spinoza draws specific institutional consequences. The continuity of political society with the state of nature supports this analogical transference. Second, equality as a single type of relationship acts analogically to relate the diverse types of things that are characterized as equals throughout Spinoza's writings. In this way, the idea of equal pro- vides thematic coherence to the system as a whole. Geometric equality is the root analogy from which Spinoza draws immediate ontological consequences. The equality of ratiocination is the psychological complement of the equality of political fight. The equality of political right is itself a sort of subset of the 240 SPINOZA'SIDEA OF EQUALITY equality of the internal power by which particulars exist; it is the fight of those particulars (people) who share the equality of ratiocination.

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